


The Sunscreen Wars

by greyhavensking



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Remembers, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, I personally blame Steve and his stubborn bullshit, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Oh look, POV Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson is So Done, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Stubborn Steve Rogers, That's A Tag!, This is borderline crack, but with more angst than you'd expect in a crack fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26761291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyhavensking/pseuds/greyhavensking
Summary: Steve Rogers doesn't wear sunscreen. This frustrates Bucky Barnes to no end.(But really, it goes deeper than that.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 120





	The Sunscreen Wars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [suspendedinice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/suspendedinice/gifts).



> This became... so much more than I intended. I figured this would be like, maybe a thousand words? Fifteen hundred at the most? Clearly things spiraled. Also, clearly I have no self-control. Oh well. I had fun with this one. Sorry for the minor angst fest that is Steve's internal monologue -- I don't know how to write him any other way, apparently. I swear this was supposed to be pure fluff and humor, but these two... can't give me a break.

Steve hasn’t had many occasions to visit the beach in his life. His lungs made swimming more hazardous than it already would have been, what with the Atlantic water being so cold even in the summer that it could lay Steve (thin-skinned, without an ounce of protective fat anywhere on his bony body) up with chills if he spent more than a few minutes splashing around. Bucky indulged him, sometimes, when Steve was feeling particularly incensed at life, or if they’d managed to scrape through the month with more than pennies left between them, and before that Steve’s ma had been convinced the fresh sea air would do him good in the long run. It was never often, though, which Steve thought might have had to do with more than just their financial woes or even his asthma.

But the point, here, is that Steve’s boots are currently sinking into soft gray sand, and the breeze that’s coming off the water has that tinge of salt that makes him want to breathe in deep, keep the scent trapped up in his chest like that’ll immortalize the sense of calm he feels in this moment. With the sun high overhead and the gentle crashing of waves providing soothing background noise, he’d be hard-pressed to call this day anything less than perfect.

Aside from the fact that, you know, they’re in  _ Jersey _ . Or that they only reason they’re here at all (at the edge of some sleepy little shore town,  _ Cape  _ something-or-other, Steve had only gotten a glimpse of the coordinates before getting hustled off the quinjet with the others) is that their last mission went wrong in almost every conceivable way short of someone fucking  _ dying _ . 

Bad intel, double agents, uncooperative weather, malfunctioning equipment — you name it, it went to shit. They’d come under heavy fire on what should have been a milk run, and it was only luck that Clint and Natasha were with them; he, Bucky, and Sam probably wouldn’t have walked away from that facility had they been on their own as they’d originally planned. And in the process of collapsing the underground tunnels that allowed a steady stream of AIM agents to fill in the ranks faster than they could take them down, Clint and Steve got caught in the rubble. Steve took the brunt of the hit with his shield, but they’d both suffered a myriad of scrapes and bruises, and Clint’s right ulna was fractured. Steve may or may not have taken a hit to the head, but he’s not planning on disclosing that information unless it becomes pertinent, no matter what kind of murderous face Bucky makes at him.

They’d gotten out, obviously, but the quinjet… It was a  _ lightning strike _ , of all fucking things, and Clint says they should be damn grateful that he was able to make the emergency landing work at all, given the circumstances. Steve’s not inclined to argue with him; he can fly if he needs to, but he doesn’t have even a quarter of Clint’s technical knowledge or flight experience. 

So here they are, kicking their heels on a South Jersey beach, the five of them spread out either to lick their wounds in private (Clint and Nat) or to map out a workable perimeter (Bucky and a reluctant Sam, who’d been cajoled with the promise of a share of Bucky’s prized  _ hipster beer _ ). None of them had their phones on hand (general mission protocols), and only Nat’s communicator had survived the firefight — and just their luck, no one was available to pick them up just yet, as while they were gone the rest of the Avengers had been called up to handle some nasty situation in Australia involving… some kind of slime creatures. Communications cut out before Tony could dole out a real explanation, but frankly, Steve doesn’t want to know. 

Nothing he can do about it, though, as much as it chafes at him to admit it. The others know to steer clear of him when he’s in a mood (which he is, he recognizes that even if he’d never give Bucky the satisfaction by saying it out loud), which is why he’s alone with them all paired off. He should take advantage of it, though — he doesn’t want anyone fussing over his injuries, not when they’ll be healed within days instead of the weeks it would be for anyone else. 

Steve surveys the beach for another few seconds, mapping out his team — Natasha and Clint are further down the stretch of sand, sitting together well away from the water; Sam and Bucky aren’t in sight, and that would normally get Steve’s heart rate tripping, but Bucky hasn’t turned off his comms and Steve can hear him loud and clear, trading jabs with Sam over something Steve doesn’t bother trying to parse. 

Assured there aren’t any eyes on him, Steve starts shucking off his gear. The shield and its harness drop into the sand at his feet, quickly followed by his gloves, boots and socks because he’s sure he’s got blisters, and then it’s the arduous task of fiddling with the hidden zipper of his suit until he can peel the top half off and toss it aside, along with his undershirt. The fabric doesn’t come free easily, some of it adhered to his skin with dried blood, but the sting of tearing it away doesn’t even register when his entire body feels like it went twelve rounds with the Hulk and  _ then  _ got run over by a semi-truck.  _ Breathing  _ hurts, and doesn’t that just drag him right back to his pre-serum days, when walking up a flight of stairs might’ve been enough to have him wheezing. Wrinkling his nose, Steve shelves the memory and the phantom aches that accompany it, settling himself cross-legged in the sand next to the pile of red-white-and-blue he’s not looking forward to squeezing into again.

His injuries are — not great. That’s his utterly unprofessional assessment, and it sure as hell wouldn’t fly with anyone else. But lucky for him, right now he’s all by his lonesome and he’s an expert at detaching himself from the very concept of mortality; he’s been perfecting the practice for the last, oh, three decades — or the last ten, depending on how you view his time in the ice. Either way, he sets about rifling through the med kit he snatched from the quinjet with a determined set to his jaw and the singular focus of a man well-versed in ignoring every warning sign his body has in its arsenal. 

The mental checklist goes as follows: 

  * _Possible_ concussion; his hand comes away with flecks of red when he runs it along the back of his skull, but if there was a wound it’s since closed up, the blood likely matting down his hair or lining the inside of his helmet



  * Myriad bruises across his back and shoulders, where the shield dug into his flesh while it held off the worst of the concrete chunks that rained down on him and Clint
  * Three-inch knife wound over left side of his ribs; he barely remembers the strike or the assailant, but _something_ slipped through the reinforced kevlar plates of his uniform. He’s left wondering when AIM suddenly started using something as traditional as _knives_ , but it’s not worth pursuing so he shakes it off and moves on
  * Burn on right shoulder from one of AIM’s more _inspired_ ray-guns; the skin is blistered but already healing from what he can tell, so it must not have gone through too many layers of skin
  * Red tint to the skin of his—



Steve stops short, blinking at the arm he’s raised to chest-height. Opens his mouth, reconsiders the futility of that, closes it again promptly. Huh. He cranes his neck to squint at the canvas of blue sky — not a cloud in sight.  _ Fantastic _ . Steve didn’t factor this into the battleplan, seeing as they were meant to observe the AIM base  _ at night _ , and he’s hardly ever out of uniform on a mission. Hardly ever shows  _ this much skin _ . His very pale, very  _ Irish  _ skin. Which is now quickly reddening under the harsh glare of the sun.

_ Fuck _ .

It’s a common misconception that he doesn’t bruise or burn as easily as he used to, pre-serum. In that regard, it’s actually like nothing has changed; what’s different is how quickly the damaged cells or burst capillaries are repaired or replaced. He doesn’t think of it much, honestly, because he barely registers there’s even a problem, it’s gone so fast. 

Bucky, though. That’s, uh. Another thing that hasn’t really changed from the olden days.

Steve casts another surreptitiously look around, relieved to find none of his teammates have wandered any closer during his lapse in attention. Sunburn isn’t anything to get worked up over, frankly, and it’s a point Steve has argued for literal decades. He — reluctantly — gets why his ma and Bucky were wary of him going to the beach when he was a kid. Or a teenager. Or a young adult. The  _ point _ , though, is that most of the risks associated with a beach outing don’t apply anymore — his lungs, his heart, his literal  _ everything  _ run at peak capacity these days. So, really, he hasn’t been to the beach lately because of the job; time constraints and that pervasive fear that the second he steps away from the shield all hell is going to break loose, because his luck is actually that terrible. That’s it, though; no other reason, certainly not  _ health-related _ . 

And — Steve can be honest with himself for a moment. Bucky’s concern for him has always,  _ always  _ been a warm, bright light in even the most dismal points of their lives. He railed against it when they were younger, half-jealous of Bucky’s easy physique and natural charm, half worried that accepting help of any kind without a fight would send a message to the universe that he’d given in. To what, exactly, he can’t say, despite feeling the vestiges of that fear even now in his scientifically-perfected body. 

But, regardless of that… Now, Steve couldn’t be more grateful for Bucky’s motherhenning, because it means he’s _here_ , alive, and still Steve’s Bucky. Not the same, of course; Steve would be a selfish fool to have expected anything else. But Bucky knows him and loves him, both as he did when they were kids and as _more_ now that neither of them have the convenient excuse of a relationship between them being illegal, and Steve may grumble and complain when Bucky insists on looking him over after a mission, or icing a sprain that won’t even exist in twenty-four hours, or not-so-gently taking him to the mat to prove just how _not fine_ he really is, but. Steve loves it all.

Okay, he loves  _ most  _ of it. The sunscreen thing is a little—

“Steven Grant Rogers.”

Steve doesn’t turn his head, feigning interest in inspecting his bloody, tattered gloves for any signs that they’re salvageable. He doesn’t hear Bucky’s approach (and he wouldn’t; that fucker rarely tries to make noise around Steve, claiming he’s too amused by Steve jumping out of his skin whenever a metal hand randomly snakes around his waist) but the hairs lining the back of his neck stand on end as he registers Bucky’s presence no more than a dozen feet away from him. Shit. Shit fucking  _ shit _ . 

“Buck,” Steve says, with every ounce of the joviality he isn’t currently feeling, still without looking away from his gloves. He subtly shifts, though, deliberately releasing the tension from his legs as he clocks exit points from the corner of his eyes. “You and Sam finish securing the perimeter? How far did you go down the shoreline, anyway? Pretty wide territory to cover, hope you’re not stretching yourself too thin there—”

There’s the faintest brush of cold against Steve’s burning shoulder and he’s up like a shot, abandoning his gear and his shield to hightail it down the beach. He’s faster than Bucky, he knows that, he’s tested it, for god’s sake, and with the sudden adrenaline flooding his system he’s sure he can break a few land-speed records. That, of course, doesn’t stop Bucky from making another grab at him, which Steve barely dodges, twisting on his heel and losing precious seconds when his foot slips in a damp patch of sand. But he rights himself and keeps running, chancing a glance over his shoulder to see Bucky cursing, half-sprawled in the incoming surf, his clunky combat boots apparently doing him no favors on the unstable terrain.

“Rogers, you fucker!” Bucky shouts after him, bringing an untimely grin to Steve’s lips that he doesn’t bother trying to hide. “You look like you’re getting fuckin’  _ boiled  _ over there. Like a fucking lobster. Would it kill you to keep a thing of sunscreen on you?”

“Don’t need it!” Steve calls back cheekily, valiantly ignoring the prickling sting of the sunburn that dusts the tops of his shoulders, the skin pulling too tight with every swing of his arms as he runs. “Serum’ll have it taken care of real soon, remember?”

All he gets from Bucky is another foul-mouthed insult before he’s scrambling back to his feet, which is when Steve swings his attention forward again. And it’s a good thing, too, because he barely swerves in time to avoid barrelling right through Sam, who at a glance looks miserable and sweaty, still kitted out in his full gear and absently tucking a knife away in the sheathe on his thigh. Steve wonders who it was for — Steve himself, likely for scaring the shit out of Sam with his full-tilt run, or Bucky, for something he did or said while they were patrolling together. Not that it matters; Steve is just grateful he moved before  _ another  _ knife caught him in the gut.

There’s no time for small-talk, not when Bucky’s hot on his heels, but Steve still slows a little when he hears Sam’s indignant squawk.

“What the fuck, man?” Sam hisses as Steve rushes past him, only really audible because of Steve’s enhanced hearing. “How do you even have the energy for whatever bullshit dumbassery you’re playing at right now?”

“The Winter Soldier’s after me, pal! Got my second wind!”

“This better not be some of your weird-ass foreplay, Rogers! ‘Cause I sure as hell ain’t gonna listen to your complaining when you’ve got sand chafing your dick!”

Steve cackles, which he knows just pisses Sam off more, seeing as how he’s still got the breath to laugh when he’s, well, running for his life. Sam’s really never really gotten over the day they met, and Steve is all too happy to pour gasoline on this particular fire. 

He can hear Bucky’s impressive vocabulary somewhere behind him, not too close but clearly gaining on him while he’s been distracted by Sam. The sand is hot under his feet, the sea breeze sharp with the scent of saltwater and whipping tears from his eyes, and Bucky’s probably going to toss his ass into the water when he catches up — for as shitty as the day has been up until now, Steve is ridiculously happy. Giddy, even. He never would’ve guessed sunburn would be the catalyst for that, but, well — he’s gotten used to the Future surprising him at every turn.

At one point, Steve zig-zags his way back across the beach, throwing a sloppy salute at Clint and Natasha when he nears them. Nat takes one look at him, slides her gaze no doubt to see Bucky sprinting in his wake, and just rolls her eyes, going right back to carding her fingers through Clint’s hair. Clint, his head in Nat’s lap, offers Steve an enthusiastic thumbs-up, which Steve takes as encouragement and maybe a wish for good luck. Not that Steve needs it, but he appreciates the sentiment all the same.

Steve has no idea how long the chase has gone on for when he finds himself at a rocky outcropping that extends pretty far into the water, neatly bisecting the shore and serving as a natural barrier to keep beachgoers from getting into what he assumes to be private property. Considering Steve has never in his life respected the threat of private property, he doesn’t hesitate to launch himself onto the nearest rock, clambering to get as high up as he can without losing his footing. He’s expecting the incessant burn of his blistered feet on the sun-heated stone, and he compensates by shifting his weight to the balls of his feet, trying for the least amount of surface contact.

What he isn’t expecting is for Bucky to be  _ right there  _ at the peak of the outcropping, waiting to ambush him.

“Fucking cheating  _ asshole _ ,” Steve grunts as Bucky locks his metal around his neck and yanks him off-balance, the two of them going down hard on the relatively flat rock they’re perched on. Bucky pins him neatly after a brief struggle, one knee on his right bicep, careful of the ray-gun burn there, his weight settled squarely on Steve’s bare chest, metal hand wrapped tight around his left wrist, locking it above his head. If Steve  _ really  _ wanted to shove him off, Bucky’s left him a few openings, but — god, why would he wanna run  _ now _ ? 

The best part of getting chased is, as always, getting caught after all.

“Didn’t cheat,” Bucky huffs, flexing his fingers around Steve’s wrist. Steve won’t admit it, but the chill of the metal is fucking heaven on his skin right now. “Wilson offered a tactical advantage and I changed my plans accordingly.”

Tactical advantage? Steve tips his head back, squinting against the glare of the sun; and there’s Sam, alright, just touching down into the sand at the foot of the rocks, wings retracting into his pack as he smirks up at Steve. 

“Sam, you traitor!” Steve laughs, trying and failing to suppress the warmth that blooms in his chest from seeing his best friends working together of their own volition. Against him, sure, but he’ll take any progress he can get at this point. “You never offer to give me a lift!” 

“And I won’t be offering another to Barnes, either. I just couldn’t take any more of…” Sam makes an incomprehensible gesture at Steve and Bucky, face scrunching up. “Whatever the hell this even is. Figured once Barnes caught you that’d put an end to it, so.” He shrugs. “And hey, look at that! He got you to stay in one fucking place, so I’m calling it a win.”

“Oh no,” Bucky says, and Steve snaps his head down at the growl in Bucky’s voice. His body… does not react in a way to suggest it understands the dangers of the current situation. “It’s not a win until this  _ goddamn idiot  _ learns that just ‘cause he heals at superhuman rate doesn’t mean he’s gotta be in pain in the meantime.”

“Aw, Buck—”

“Shut the fuck up, Rogers. You and your fuckin’ pale-ass skin. God bless your ma, but you get your coloring from her and it’s always driven me halfway insane how red you go in the sun.” Bucky leans back for a second, popping open one of the compartments on his utility belt and withdrawing a bottle of green something or other. Steve’s brain seizes for a few tortuous heartbeats, drawing on memories of  _ another  _ bottle Bucky sometimes keep on hand for missions, but then Bucky’s pouring a generous glob of the gel onto his hand (the flesh one — Bucky’s ultra-careful about what gets between the plates of his metal hand) and smoothing his palm over Steve’s shoulder. Steve’s nose twitches at the sour scent of aloe even before he registers the instant relief on his sunburnt skin.

“You just… have aloe with you at all times?” Steve can’t help the question. He knows Bucky takes being prepared as seriously as Nat does, likely a holdover from when they would have been punished for  _ not  _ having the right tools on hand, but this seems… extreme, even for Bucky. 

Bucky narrows his eyes. He unclips another compartment and pulls out a second bottle. Sunscreen this time.  _ Of course _ .

“When I start finding gray hairs,” Bucky says, tucking away the sunscreen and returning to his generous application of aloe to Steve’s burns, “I want you to know my first thought is gonna be that all your shit has finally caught up to me. I’m gonna be able to trace every single one back to one of your stunts.”

“Bucky, seriously. I’m just a little burnt, you don’t have to get all huffy over it.”

“ _ Huffy _ . Fuck you, Rogers. Why can’t you get it through your thick fucking skull that I can’t stand seeing you hurting? Yeah, I get it — the serum.” He presses a little harder at the tender skin of Steve’s neck, raising a pointed brow when Steve hisses at the contact. “This’ll be gone in, what? An hour? Two hours tops? So what? You’re hurting  _ now _ , doesn’t matter that you’ve had worse, or that you can take  _ more _ . This is something you can prevent, and even if you don’t wanna go that far, it’s something easily treatable. What’s the point in suffering for no goddamn reason? You don’t gotta be a martyr about everything, Steve.”

Steve blinks. Blinks again as Bucky slides off him and urges him into sitting up so he can work on the burns on Steve’s back. Bucky’s hands are gentle, feather-light, and even more so when he finds one of the injuries Steve endured from the mission gone wrong. Steve can hear him muttering to himself, something about how Steve wouldn’t know first-aid if someone hit him upside the head with a medkit. Which — that seems kind of counterproductive, in Steve’s opinion, but it’s not important. Not right now, anyway. Instead, Steve closes his eyes and lets himself focus on the feeling of Bucky’s hands on him, sweeping down his spine and then back up and over his shoulders again. 

He genuinely does love when Bucky takes care of him — he’s just never been good at letting him. Or taking care of himself, if he’s being honest. It’s almost worse now, with this body; he knows he can take bigger risks, bigger hits and just keep going, so he does. Doesn’t consider the cost to himself, doesn’t think about easing his own pain, because, like Bucky said, he’s had worse. He was in constant pain when he was younger, before the serum, his whole body aching; when that was suddenly gone… Steve figured he knew what it was like to hurt. He could do it again, and again, and again, and still get the job done, because he’s been doing it his whole life.

But he doesn’t have to.

_ What a time for an existential crisis _ , he thinks, wry, just as Bucky’s finishing up. 

Bucky leans over and rests his chin in the dip of Steve’s shoulder, sliding his arms around Steve’s waist and pressing his chest into Steve’s back. He’s definitely smearing aloe all over his own uniform, and it brings a smile to Steve’s mouth to know that Bucky doesn’t  _ care _ . That he’d rather hold onto Steve.

“Can practically see the smoke coming outta your ears, Stevie,” he murmurs. “You actually thinking about what I said?”

The sunburn is, objectively, the least of his problems, given the extent of his other injuries. But it’s indicative of the larger issue, and a good enough catalyst for Steve to  _ maybe  _ see what Bucky’s been trying to point out to him for years now. It’s run-of-the-mill stuff, really, a drop in the bucket when he compares it to everything else — but that’s the point. He’s gotten so good at ignoring the small stuff that he hardly bothers to spare a thought to the really concerning stuff. It’s all the same to him. And that’s — not great either. 

Steve lays his own hands over Bucky’s, leaning back into his warmth. 

“You’re not allowed to say  _ I told you so _ ,” he says, and Bucky snorts, pressing his smile into the side of Steve’s neck.

“Nah,” Bucky says, “of course not. You think I wanna end up in the dog house when we get home? I got plans, sweetheart. Big plans.”

Steve grins. “Uh-huh. Any of those plans involve traumatizing Sam?” Sam, who has in his illustrious career as an Avenger seen far, far too much of Steve and Bucky in various stages of undress. Sam, who Steve can just see camped out with Natasha and Clint, bent over Clint to look at a gash on the archer’s leg.

“What we get up to in our own fucking apartment is our business. It’s his own fault for never knocking.”

“Buck…”

“One time, Rogers.  _ One time _ .”

“We were in Sam’s guest room, Bucky!”

“With the door closed! It’s also not my fault that he’s got some damn thin walls!”

Steve barks out a laugh that has Bucky tightening his grip on him, muttering vague, threatening nonsense into his shoulder, which Steve happily ignores. 

“I’ll let him know he should give us some space after this, yeah?”

“You better, ‘cause I’m not apologizing if he gets himself an eyeful again.” Bucky sighs. “But first, I’m re-dressing some of these. You don’t have a concussion, given how long it took me to catch your dumb ass, but I don’t like the look of this one,” he says, brushing his hand gingerly over the knife wound on Steve’s ribs. Steve doesn’t say that it’s already closing up, because it’s not what Bucky wants to hear, not what either of them needs at the moment. “Then you’re getting a shower. Or a bath. I don’t care, you just need to get clean.”

Steve quirks a brow, tilting his head at Bucky. “Even when I’ll just get dirty later?” 

“God, you’re gross. You’re covered in  _ blood _ , Steve. You think that’s sexy?”

“I mean, you’re looking pretty good…”

“Bath. Non-negotiable.”

“Whatever you say, Buck.”

“Damn right, whatever I say.” With that, Bucky unwinds himself from around Steve and stands, reaching down to haul Steve to his feet as well. He doesn’t let go of Steve’s hand, just intertwines their fingers and tugs him along as he starts picking his way down the rocks. “Let’s go let Wilson know he’s not welcome at the Rogers-Barnes residence for the next few days.”

“Days? Jesus, Buck, you know we’ve gotta debrief with Fury at some point, right?”

“Fuck that. Wilson and Romanova can handle Fury.” He glances over his shoulder at Steve, brows raised in challenge.  _ Oh _ , does that get Steve’s blood pumping. “What, you think you won’t last that long?”

Steve just lets his mouth curve into a wicked smile.

Turns out he’s actually looking forward to practicing some self-care. 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/greyhavensking)


End file.
